Have you ever seen your cat staring across the room, deeply intent on watching something when you know that there is nothing there?
The fascinated feline slinks softly off the arm of your chair, eases around behind your legs while never once removing its eyes from the nothingness that seems to attract it like iron filings to a magnet.
You can place both hands in front of the cat's face and it merely slides its head sideways, intent only on watching that now almost palpable emptiness. You can move it to another room and the instant you release it, it is back to the door and carefully easing around the corner as if expecting attack from any direction.
I recently experienced such an occurrence with the cat of a friend. She was a young Siamese and was sitting in my lap as I was reading a book. I was just turning a page when I realized the cat had moved off my lap and under my arm and was staring -- no, glaring -- into a corner on the opposite side of the room.
Thinking that maybe she'd seen a mouse or a spider, I tried to see if I could find it. I even got up and moved to the corner and examined every square inch of space. Nothing.
But when I was back in my chair, I discovered that the cat had moved to the floor and was flat on her belly, her tail flick-flicking its "I see a bird" beat, her back feet making bread on the rug as she dug in and prepared to charge.
But she never moved. It was as if she had become frozen in time. An ivory sculpture forever posed in the beginning of a leap.
And then I heard it. A high-pitched chattering sound, like frightened teeth at the midnight creak of a haunted house. And the back of my neck and all across my shoulders got prickly, and I felt a surge of adrenaline through my body.
The sound was from the cat. Her bottom jaw trembling frantically as if she were staring at a flock of birds through the kitchen window. And she was staring hard into that opposite, and empty, corner of the room.
I got up again and went once more to the corner. As I moved past the cat, she mewed plaintively, as if she were trying to tell me something. But look as I might, I could find nothing there.
If you are a person with half the imagination I have, you'll understand how I felt. The dark corners of my mind were telling me that maybe I should jump into the car and take in a movie. And my logic was telling me that the idiot Siamese had a screw loose.
What does a cat see when there's nothing there?
Surely, if you own one of these slinky beasts, you have experienced such an occurrence. It's quite disconcerting.
And what if there is something there that only a cat can see?
I read a science-fiction short story once that said cats can see into the future and they are watching something that has yet to come, or maybe something from the past that has already been. Or something that might never be.
Mysteries such as this have followed cats from the very beginning as they slink down the hallways of time. Their toughness and ability to survive seemingly insurmountable problems have earned them their mythical nine lives. Black cats are said to consort with witches, and books have been written about the superstitions that fill their paw prints.
With all this swirling around my head, I did the only logical thing to be done under the circumstances. I locked the cat in the bathroom and sat down to write this column.
Funny thing, though. I keep having the creepiest sensation that something is reading this over my shoulder.
Marc, my cats do that too. I believe that they can "sense" things that we can't.
Is it a spirit of a loved one, come to watch over us, and they can see them?
Or, do our little babies all have a strange way of acting to freak us out?
I think that they are truly sensing something, or someone...
Animals have proved, time and time again, that they can sense, smell, see things that we can't.
They can smell cancer in a person. They know, before hand, of an earthquake.
They are tuned in to something that we aren't... and we could learn from them!
:::>^..^<::: ~*~The Journey is more important than the end or the start~*~ :::>^..^<:::
Some say that cats' reactions to sensory input border on pre-cognition. I think their brains are well-tuned to react quickly which is what makes them keen predators in the wild. But as for "seeing things"? A little organic chemistry and modelling will reveal the entire spectrum that the feline's brain responds to from the optic nerve. Surely a specialized camera tuned to the same response curves wouldn't see anything significant. So I would expect that it's more along the lines that they "sense" something with a 6th sense. I sense things too from time to time. Perhaps cats are just more connected to their 6th sense than humans generally are.
Well, look at Egyptian history! They revered felines because they believed that cats "escorted" and watched over the dead!
So....if we were to believe in that aspect...maybe the cat was telling on a ghost!
Cat: Call out the dogs we have another one going over the wall!
01/17/04
Yes cats do "know" and sense things or "something. Last year we lived in a fairly new house, and one hot, humid, July night (1AM), the cat ran into our bedroom , jumped into our over night bag, and acted like he was tryiong to close it, and he kept looking at the bedroom window with something going "bump" outside.... and that was when we met our furry friend "Sasquatch" . But sources say he's been around here for at least fifty years or more. Only serious can reply, adult content only!!!!
I have four dogs and they have all done that. They stare at something and seem to be really concentrated on it. A legend is that dogs can see ghosts. I dont know about cats? Also whenever I talk with friends about ghost stories I have seen on tv etc. my dog suddenly starts to bark at the walls. They have done that about 2 out of the 20 times I have talked about ghost. The odds are really uneven but it only happens at that time. It's pretty interested if you ask me.
This could only come out of Contra Costa County.
I've lived there,Its from the Stuff in the air from the "Plants" Any one who lives (or lived) there for more then 20 years could tell you...
I had a cat there, It went "NUTS" Raised it from a kitten. The cat and I were Just sitting in the back room,Playing with a ball of string, When we stoped, it came up on my lap, and started to snuggle. We sat for about a 1/2 hour,Then it got up, Clawed me, Jumped to the floor and ran strieght into the wall with such force that it bounced off the wall and lay on the floor for over a minut, then it got up and wanted to sit with me again, Needless to say, I took off for a walk.
Maby its the water???
if u look closely u see dancing goblems now go and see it crepy i got 18 cats i know onc all of them gatherd and wach the danc resitel lol true true true!
one time my choowawa was staring at a corner and i look and it looked blury but i saw a fase of a cut girl looking strat at me i trde to kiss like i was hipnotised then it disaperd and i cood see some like lines abot 10 of them go up and strat to my lamp and it blew out i was so scard dam it was crepy wow
12-25-2003 05:30 PM
one time my choowawa was staring at a corner and i look and it looked blury but i saw a fase of a cut girl looking strat at me i trde to kiss like i was hipnotised then it disaperd and i cood see some like lines abot 10 of them go up and strat to my lamp and it blew out i was so scard dam it was crepy wow 
